The Life After
by cleana
Summary: Later, when the story was told by neighbors and retold by neighbors of those neighbors, they would all say the same thing: "No one knows for sure why she jumped. Her parents say she was totally unsocial, never even leaving her room.."


If you had been looking at the sky that morning, you might not have noticed anything. You might have turned away from the window, calmly sipping your coffee. Turning your back on the huge brick apartment.

The clouds were tinged golden, the sky giving birth to a new day. Everyone who watched the sun rise failed to notice the one thing that would later become a tale only told in the newspapers - a girl, standing on the balcony.

Later, when the story was told by neighbors and retold by neighbors of those neighbors, they would all say the same thing: "No one knows for sure why she jumped. Her parents say she was totally unsocial, never even leaving her room.."

So, why was it that she climbed the steps on the stool of the balcony? What was running through her mind as she looked down at the town spread below her? What drove her feet to take that one last step, to send herself falling silently at the edge? Why did she leave herself at the mercy of gravity, which brought her to the ground and splattered her guts on the pavement?

Her family knew nothing. After a week or two, they turned their backs on the issue and refused to speak of it. But everyone knew who she was. They had started missing her at school, and in turn, the kids came home and told their parents, and the parents told their neighbors, and so on. Things spread fast in a town like this, the town where Madotsuki lived. They say, towards the end of her life, she kept no connections to anything outside her room. Later, when her parents packed all of her things in a box and shoved it in the depths of storage, they found practically nothing in her room. Just a TV, a bookshelf, a bed, NASU. No suicide note. Nothing.

What they failed to do, however, was check in the desk. The desk with the small lamp and rotating chair. The one with the drawer that kept her dream diary safe. Maybe, if they had looked in there, they would have understood. They would have guessed as to why she removed herself from this world willingly.

But no one ever did.

No fingers besides hers turned the worn pages. No nose but hers smelled the old book smell. No pen but hers had ever touched the surface of the diary. No eyes but hers had ever drank up the words. No mind but hers had seen the horror that was enfolded in those pages.

What did it tell? What did she store in between the covers of her journal?

Maybe it was a tale of a room with twelve doors, each one different from the next, all positioned in a clock-like arrangement. Doors full of different worlds where it snowed or where hideous monsters wandered freely. Maybe it told of women with hooked noses that would send Madotsuki to a dark, small space and kept her there until she woke up. Maybe it told of different objects that turned her into different things, things that reminded her of childhood or things she wanted to be. Maybe she wanted to have beautiful blonde hair. Maybe she loved riding a bike as a child. Maybe she loved folklore of the yuki onna and always wondered what it was like to be one.

Each world was different, yet the same. All were a part in her dreamscape, the deepest parts of her mind that no one could understand, probably not even herself. Who was Monoko? Who was Monoe? Who was Masada, Poniko, Uboa? Did they tie into her real life? Were their memories and pain the reason she propelled herself over the edge?

Who knows.

Maybe she thought she was still dreaming. Maybe she just wanted to see if this was the way out of her mind's torture. Maybe, when she tried to step onto empty air, she was reaching for that innocent happiness that had escaped her long ago.

Whatever it was, it did not stop the reality of death. And so, as it was, the people who failed to notice that girl the warm morning she jumped pretended to be sad when the newspapers interviewed them. Her parents pretended to care. Her old friends at school pretended to miss her.

But after she was gone, she was no more than an invisible blood stain on hot pavement.


End file.
